Fast Forward
by NDV
Summary: she'd made it to the White House not because she'd asked for the right things or worked oh-so-hard, but because somewhere along the way, she'd learned to speak for others when she was too afraid to speak for herself.


Fast Forward  
  
-Liza, lizaausten@tri-countynet.net or malenka@malenkaya.com  
  
I've had the worst case of writer's block since, well it's been a while, and it seems that the worst of it was directed toward West Wing. At any rate, I cleaned and listened to music and read and did all of this other stuff and finally, FINALLY, tonight, something popped into my head. I feel better. Now, this may be rough and kind of… well, ragged… but I suppose it'll work. I hope this is enjoyable and I'd love some feedback, good or bad, constructive or not.  
  
Spoilers: Hrm, none really…  
  
Rating: PG13, I suppose; this is AUish and starts Pre-White House, winding up to right before re-election  
  
Pairing: CJ/Other romance, CJ/Toby friendship, mentionings of Andi/Toby (I'm talking one line here), and a little Josh thrown in for good measure.  
  
Disclaimers/Credits/Etc.: song excerpts are from Alanis Morisette's Hands Clean, which I've been listening to forever and just finally thought, hey, this could be useful… CJ, CJ's father, Toby, Andi, Carol, and Josh are not mine. Charles Atwood, Eldridge Scott, Marlee Thomas (oh yeah, I mentioned her all of once), and Cecelia Atwood are mine.  
  
I just thought, hey, why not complicate things a little more when I say what's actually wrong with CJ's father? I think it'd explain a bit, but it also leaves room for me to go back and write something else. Thanks, as always, go to Claudie.  
  
---  
  
Ooh this could be messy  
  
But you don't seem to mind  
  
---  
  
"Thank you, Miss Cregg," the deputy smiled, bowing to the slight young woman as she dropped a file onto his desk, graceful and effervescent even as she tried to fade into surroundings her height could not mesh with. "You'll be returning home, today?"  
  
"Yes, sir," she nodded, smoothing the length of her skirt with one hand as she tucked a stray tendril of hair behind her ear with the other, a hazy, mysterious expression painted jaggedly across her face as her eyes settled upon the man she spoke with.  
  
"It's been a pleasure, Miss Cregg, I hope you enjoy the rest of your senior year. Should you run into any trouble," he offered a card, "feel free to call. However cliche`d and overdone this sounds, I actually mean it." He offered another grin, straightening his somewhat fluorescent- looking tie as she withdrew. "You know, Senator Atwood asked after you yesterday, he saw you down here in the bullpen delivering papers and was quite impressed with your skills."  
  
"I was delivering papers," she remarked, nonplused yet slightly bemused.  
  
Again, the young man chuckled, "Yes, well, he was impressed that you remembered who everyone was, then. At any rate, it's been a pleasure, Miss. Should you need any recommendations or anything of the sort, or decide to follow that nose of yours into politics, I imagine there would be quite a few associated with this office that would be interested in your pursuance of that dream - not to mention your skills."  
  
"Thank you, sir," Claudia Jean Cregg nodded, then departed from the office and sunk back into the background, shortly thereafter planning to disappear into her Napa Valley life.  
  
She would be eighteen years old in two days, and on the third day, Senator Atwood would request the meeting that would introduce her as the newest face in California politics - his personal assistant - and finance the next nine years of her education.  
  
---  
  
Claudia Jean Cregg was born May 18th, 1962 at Dayton-Liberty Hospital in Dayton, Ohio, seven pounds and two ounces, twenty-three inches long. From birth onward, she was long and lean, loud and intelligent. Sometimes it unnerved her father, when he looked at her and saw himself - brilliance and presence and insecurity wrapped into a sometimes beautiful and sometimes not package - and saw her making those same early mistakes he'd made, not having a life on the outside, not being on the inside, always with the nose in a book, or arguing the subjects her mother's society friends clearly hid away in the 'taboo' folder.  
  
It was when she first walked into Atwood's campaign headquarters three weeks following his phone call that her father relaxed, breathed more deeply, and realized that his daughter would be fine despite his worries, despite their mistakes, despite the disease that was already scratching at the precipice of his mind. She had packed her suitcases slowly, all the while second-guessing her move away from her home in the Valley, her father, and all that she'd grown up longing to be. Somewhere along the road during those weeks, she'd subconsciously evolved into another woman, CJ rather than Claudia, old rather than young, and when she descended the staircase with a hand gliding down the wooden runner for the final time in 1980, her father wished his little girl the best, and felt a woman hug him farewell.  
  
After the first meeting with Senator Charles A. Atwood the Second, CJ Cregg did not see him again personally for several months. Always in one place or another - Sacramento, San Diego, Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco - and always away from his home, he campaigned valiantly for re-election to the Senate he'd been a member of for only six years. When he'd finally arrived back to headquarters, it had been unexpectedly, and people had stood abruptly from their work, some slapping him on the back and others greeting him happily, shaking hands or hugging, as the silver- haired Senator charismatically greeted his staff and supporters.  
  
They were a magnificent group of people, he'd said, devoted and dependable and bound for success, all of them, for the Senate once again. Atwood had grinned, then, dimples etching deeply into his face as he requested that his new personal assistant uncork the bottle of champagne he kept in his office refrigerator. Good times were coming, he'd said, for the meetings across state had gone well, and the Senate was waiting for a return to the rightful party - the Democrats - and he was just the man to spearhead it.  
  
She'd watched him curiously as she twisted the corkscrew and watched the champagne flow among the thirteen people there, only three - including herself - turning down the alcohol in favor of something lighter, more stable - like he claimed they needed to be. He was striking and beautiful in ways she couldn't explain to herself, little less her brothers - though they questioned her about the famed Atwood often - and forcing herself not to stare was a feat she often could not accomplish.  
  
He was everything she wanted to be and all her father had once been, before he'd fallen ill two years before. Relapsing and remitting, attacking his brain and his nerves and what the doctors termed his myelin sheath. Relapsing and remitting Multiple Sclerosis. When he died, he would not speak her name, and that was, perhaps, what she feared the most.  
  
Stable and sensible and beautiful and admirable. And it had been far too long since anyone had looked at her in a way that made her feel useful, important. Like it wasn't so futile after all.  
  
Three months later, they had adjoining rooms in a San Francisco hotel suite, though only one of them would be used.  
  
---  
  
You're married, she told him once, years later, you're married and I'm not your wife and never can be. You've never given me the opportunity to be anything better than this to you, and that doesn't make me feel like much of a human being.  
  
He'd smiled at her, lightly tracing invisible yet unmistakable patterns across her stomach and breastbone, moving his hand to the left, to the right, then downward.  
  
You're human because you bleed, he'd told her when he finished gathering his thoughts, not because you think you're one thing and are another, or because you are or aren't. You're human not because you're important or different, but because you bleed and you dream and you are. That's all.  
  
It's not my humanity I'm worried about, she'd wanted to say, but instead she just sighed and turned into his touch, eyes closed and heart bereft, yet letting herself be carried on the currents of touch and passion and dreams, though she knew that for once, it wasn't her purpose that was futile, it was his.  
  
---  
  
Just make sure you don't tell on me especially to members of your family  
  
We best keep this to ourselves and not tell any members of our inner posse  
  
I wish I could tell the world cuz you're such a pretty thing when you're done up properly  
  
I might want to marry you one day if you'd watch that weight and keep your firm body  
  
---  
  
He was her first lover, and she'd thought that, in the beginning, it was exactly like the trashy romance novels say. Full of passion and fire and all of those things that were quite exotic and so very far from her previous imaginings. She followed him on the campaign trail from July to late October, and they'd been sitting with his wife and twelve other staff members in the parlor of her family's stately hand-me-down mansion in November while they awaited election results.  
  
It was in the bag, they'd thought, and on November 2nd, they realized that they were right. The competition wasn't much to fear then, and they toasted with champagne - all of them - as the leaves began to brown in northern California. Senator Charles A. Atwood II would begin his second term as one of two California senators, and he would deliver bills on subjects ranging from gun control to abortion to religion in public, and some would admire him for his tenacity and penchant for reform, while others fought and foamed at the mouth over his temerity.  
  
Two years later they began electing one of the other two-thirds of the Senate, and Cecilia Roberts Atwood suffered from congestive heart failure in Mendocino County while her husband and lover were holed away in Weaverville, fifteen minutes from her parents' newest home, though she would not visit. She would not die then, but three years later, at approximately the same time CJ would again become Claudia Jean when her older brother called to inform her that their father had had another attack and was confined to an in-home hospital bed.  
  
I should have visited him when we were in Napa all those times, she had told her lover, her Charles A. Atwood the Second, that night, and he had looked at her with wide stormy eyes and held out his hand, and told her that he should have been at the side of his wife as she lay dying.  
  
Instead, he'd been with her. And instead, she'd been with him. Beside him she would stand at Cecilia's funeral in place of family, and her mind would wander to all of the possibilities that would await her, them, family and children and happiness, though she knew he would never take her as his wife, for Cecilia was all that she could never be.  
  
---  
  
He sent her white roses on their anniversary, symbols of respect and sorrow, though she was never quite sure which it was for, or whether maybe they were interchangeable. Respect for her, for them, for her intelligence and dedication; sorrow for his mistakes and anger, for what could never be and what could once have been, for wasted time.  
  
They'd been together for nine years and she'd graduated from Berkeley with honors, planned to settle down, move, make her own life and her own reality. But he'd called her, loved her, wooed her again, and she'd accepted his roses and his love and his hand, and they spent more nights together away from what she could have been than they spent apart.  
  
He had hired a new personal assistant, a young man named Eldridge Scott who bumbled and stuttered in her presence and silently admired her as he pondered over the relationship between this enigma of a woman, this CJ Cregg that took a man's initials and a woman's stance, and his energetic employer. He supposed that they'd been together for as long as they'd known one another and he was not far off, for they had a comfortable schedule and an atmosphere about them that had to have been established through years of work and expectation, both realized and failed. He had to wonder why she allowed herself to be 'the other woman', if his suppositions were correct, and why she never demanded better than herself, than he allowed.  
  
Once, he'd produced his theory, questioned her on it after he'd known her long enough to not stutter quite so badly, and she'd smiled at him, tapped a fingernail against the back of his hand, and examined him under lowered lashes. Her eyes held him, ever the mystery and ever the beauty, and he did not question it, her, them, again.  
  
That night, CJ had stretched on her side much like a cat, and watched her silver-haired lover comb through ne'er-receding locks, pursing her lips with anxiety as she turned over, facing the wall rather than him, wondering like Eldridge Scott why she never asked for more, for better from him than herself.  
  
---  
  
After just over two terms in the Senate, she'd walked away on their anniversary, thirteen years, and left him to finish the final five years on his own. Sometimes, as she sat in her office just outside of Hollywood listening to the latest client spill all about things she never really cared about, she wondered what he had done at her age, when he'd been raven- haired and beautiful, and his dimples had marred his cheeks more perfectly.  
  
And sometimes she wondered what had caused her to walk away after thirteen years yet never demanding more than his nights and occasionally his lunch breaks. She'd just stood up one evening and walked from campaign headquarters, packed her suitcase and left a note between his keyboard and monitor signed 'Claudia Jean' in his home office, and driven to Hollywood. She'd been there all of three weeks before she read a newspaper clipping from the San Francisco Bee that announced the wedding of Mr. Toby Ziegler and Ms. Andrea Wyatt, her Senator Charles A. Atwood the Second's first speech writer and campaign director. Then, it had been Mr. Eldridge Scott and Ms. Marlee Thomas, the assistant and the typist, and they'd given purely and simply and had three children by the time she'd torn herself away from the news. Why had she never asked for that? she wondered, once, but then a throat had been cleared and she'd turned again to her client, left to revel in her lover's touch only in the back of her mind.  
  
She was thirty-one years old and had spent thirteen years of her life with the only man she could never have, never touch, never love - she'd never loved him because he'd never ask her to, never let her, never wanted her to give him so much - and, she often realized, she did not regret one minute of it.  
  
---  
  
If it weren't for my attention you wouldn't have been successful and  
  
If it weren't for me you would never have amounted to very much  
  
---  
  
It was five years later that the Senator's first speech writer returned to California and guided her hand back into the game she'd loved so dearly even though she had been on the outskirts of it - like everything else in her life. She had followed him to Washington, when he asked, because she was tired of white roses that she did not know the meaning of, and newspaper articles that rubbed everyone else's happiness in her face.  
  
She would not marry or have children or sing lull-a-byes as had been her childhood dream, because she'd spent thirteen unregrettable and unforgettable years of her life with a silver-haired devil that always lurked and danced just beyond the corners of her imagination. So, Claudia Jean became CJ again, for one final turn on the floor, and she joined a campaign that would give her all of the things she never before knew how to ask for, still evading and ignoring the dreams of selfish childhood in favor of bigger and better things.  
  
Yes, Senator Charles A. Atwood the Second had once said that they were bound for success, and of any of those he'd spoken the words to, it was Claudia Jean Cregg that remembered them most and held them the closest, for she was the only one that knew their true meaning.  
  
Success was in sacrifice was in forgetting yourself, and she'd made it to the White House not because she'd asked for the right things or worked oh-so-hard, but because somewhere along the way, she'd learned to speak for others when she was too afraid to speak for herself.  
  
---  
  
"Senator Charles A. Atwood the Second died early Friday, September 13th, of congestive heart failure at San Francisco General Hospital. The retired Senator served three terms in office before retiring for health reasons that seemed to be precipitated in his last four years in office. He was preceded in death by his wife, Cecelia Atwood. For all of the things Senator Atwood will be remembered for, perhaps the foremost will be the domestic violence bill he pushed through Congress in '86, which was supposedly the brainchild of an anonymous staffer." The news anchor read from the TelePrompTer as emotionlessly as any they'd ever seen, and CJ watched with wide eyes as she and Toby stood in the Communications bullpen of the west wing.  
  
"He was a brilliant man," Josh remarked, strolling past them with a folder in each hand, never really taking in the news.  
  
"Anonymous staffer?" Toby mumbled, glancing upward at the tall woman he'd been calling friend since those days in California when she was young and blond and idealistic.  
  
"Yes, he was a brilliant man, Josh," CJ whispered, mostly to herself, eyes catching her first lover's through a still picture on the television screen, soft silver hair combed backward, not a single lock out of place. She ignored the hand Toby placed on her shoulder, understanding and consolation and an offer of friendship she knew she'd acquiesce to later that day, instead sending one last smile at the picture before it too, like Senator Charles A. Atwood the Second - her Charlie, she'd always thought of him when she knew he'd never guess it - faded away.  
  
Sighing to herself, CJ called out to Carol to gather her notes for the morning's first briefing, knowing that in it she'd be questioned about the death of a man she'd once been afraid to ask to love. Yes, Claudia Jean turned CJ, turned Claudia Jean, turned CJ one last time, reflected, it was thirteen years she did not regret a single day of, and she turned from her office several minutes later, ignoring the sight of a dozen white roses on the corner of her desk.  
  
---  
  
We'll fast forward to a few years later  
  
And no one knows except the both of us  
  
And I have honored your request for silence  
  
And you've washed your hands clean of this  
  
--- 


End file.
